CHINA CHOOSES A MILLIONAIRE TO LEAD HONG KONG. CAN HE FOSTER BUSINESS CONFIDENCE IN THE TERRITORY?

Of Hong Kong's 6.3 million citizens, only 400 had a vote in the matter. And last week that elite group of electors arrived at the Hong Kong Convention Center in a procession of Rolls-Royces and Mercedes-Benz to cast their ballots for a winner anointed long before. Indeed, the deciding vote for shipping magnate Tung Chee-hwa may have been recorded in January, when China's President Jiang Zemin singled him out from a crowd of his peers for a handshake when he was in Beijing. The votes cast last week by the 400--themselves carefully screened by Beijing--were almost a formality. It may have...